


Power Play

by mentalismmaria



Category: Battleborn (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, mild robot kinkiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mentalismmaria/pseuds/mentalismmaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's a little current redirection between friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power Play

Oscar Mike, in his ingrained need to keep his mind and hands busy, took on a lot of other people’s chores. As a cloned soldier, he was engineered to need a minimal amount of sleep for his original species, and that showed as he worked well after everyone left for bed. For a good few hours, he was alone, with even Nova signing off for routine internal maintenance. It was fine for him. His earliest memories involved the loud, busy barracks of fellow Mikes, keeping him over-stimulated and on edge with the lack of peace and quiet. Did his enjoyment of solitude separate him from his mike clone siblings? It certainly separated him from the rest of his UPR peers. Which brought him back to the present; a quiet, still night on the ship at around 2am, taking inventory of the armory. He wasn’t super good with numbers, but Ghalt asked him personally, and he wasn’t about to say no.

Mike was carefully polishing the barrel of somebody’s pistol when Kleese softly padded into the room. The old scientist looked a decade past dead at this hour, his vest half-unbuttoned and his fine leather slippers on in preparation for nighttime coziness. When he noticed Mike, he jumped with a start that seemed more to get Mike’s attention than to express surprise.

“Oh! It’s you! … Mark, was it? Good; I’m glad you’re still up,”

“It’s… Mike….” Oscar Mike, he was about to say quietly, but Kleese was apparently far too old and belligerent to care about being corrected.

“Whatever. Look, I’m about to go to bed; do you think you could do me a teensy little favor? I need you to lock down ISIC’s charging station.”

The good two of Mike’s three eyes blinked out of sequence under his helmet. “… Why?” He was used to taking orders without question, but not quite like this. Would any other Mike just say ‘sir, yes sir’ and march off? Probably. Kleese looked at him like that’s what he expected, too.

“Because that’s what’s been keeping him from murdering us all in our beds since we brought him here! Just flip the switch on the side of his stall; if his chassis looks empty, you’re probably safe.” Kleese allowed himself a soft, singular chuckle. “Probably.”

Kleese was already beginning to hobble off before Mike could ask any more questions. It sounded simple enough… and it was already so late, surely ISIC would still be in sleep mode, and safe to approach. Mike was the guy with the tactical cloaking device, after all.

 

Just… sneak in, flip the switch, and get out. Mike tried to approach it like any other mission that required stealth. He liked to think he was good at that aspect of his training, even if he did have a habit of unwittingly announcing it on the field. ISIC was holed up in one of the storage rooms, both because they were running out of room and because they needed a place they could riddle with extensive security. They seemed to figure that, as an AI, he wouldn’t mind. As Mike crept through the crowded, unkempt glorified closet, he doubted that just a bit. ISIC’s charging station (or robot bed, as Mike privately noted) was a medium sized, standard issue Minion RBX charging platform stuffed into a nook between boxes of lord knows what. The clone had a hard time believing this was anything the robot agreed to. Even if ISIC was… _scary_ , didn’t he have a right to the same kind of lodging the rest of the Battleborn had? ISIC himself didn’t let it show that he cared one way or another right now, being a dead, gilded porcelain husk on the platform. The robot he occupied was cold and empty, like Kleese said.

Mike wasn’t terribly good with what he professionally labeled ‘robot crap’, but he figured the switch on one of the edges was the locking mechanism Kleese talked about. ISIC was asleep, in robot terms, surely he wouldn’t mind… whatever Mike was about to do to him. Hesitantly, Mike reached out for it, and his cloaking field rippled dangerously from the contact as he barely brushed the platform.

Mike couldn’t make it as far as flipping the switch, as his hand was grabbed roughly by something that either didn’t know or didn’t care to be gentle. The dark of the room was lit up with the blue hologram of ISIC’s skeletal face.

“Well, good morning to you too, buddy!” the Magnus sounded eternally, indecipherably chipper, as usual. “I see you’re trying to tamper with the fragile, man-made anchor that keeps me on the right side of life and an eternal, death-like sleep. Would you like some help with that?” ISIC roughly wrenched the clone’s hand up until Mike had to stand on his tiptoes. He hoped that the Magnus wouldn’t dislocate his shoulder. He needs that. The enormous, awkward chassis slowly lurched out of its resting place, as if to ensure Mike wouldn’t be able to finish his task.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, pal; I know Kleese has been locking me into naughty Magnus curfew every night. And you know what? I’m not really into it. I can’t say I’m a fan of being stuck in a dreamless, lucid stasis, waiting for some meatbag to flip a switch and allow me to live again. It’s kind of an insult to injury, don’t you think?”

“Dude, that’s messed up,” Mike blurted out before any measured response. “I uh, I didn’t know we were doing _that_ ….”

 ISIC, with his expressionless skull face and his bizarre, nonhuman body, couldn’t make any sort of tell that a humanoid like Mike could register as him acknowledging what he said. He did pause, however, in a less than robotic way, like he was processing Mike’s response.

“Kleese put you up to this, huh?”

Mike squirmed a little in the robot’s grasp, to no avail. “Yeah, ah, I just thought it was like, turning a phone off, you know? To conserve… energy…?”

“Nice to know that the organics that subdued me and allow me to live under their thumb see me as little more than a common household appliance!” ISIC’s preternaturally cheerful inflection made him sound all the more sarcastic. Mike could just _feel_ the sardonic emoji dripping off the synthesized voice. The clone was dropped without a moment’s notice, and his knees buckled from having to put his full weight on them again. Out of instinct, pre-programmed or not, Mike prepared for a fight.

ISIC put his bulky, metal hands (well, metal hand and arm cannon,) on his mechanical hips, sizing up the clone. “Oscar Mike, right? RDC-OM83-1101?”

Mike automatically stood at attention, bristling from hearing his name, his _true_ name; feeling a familiar tugging at his brain cells. ISIC seemed to notice.

“At ease, soldier. You’re good at doing what you’re told, aren’t you? I can’t say I blame you; I was once a good little engineered boy scout with no sense of agency or personhood, too. Say, I’ll let you off easy this time, pal, if you do something for me.”

“Uh, I’m not allowed to kill anybody on the ship, if that’s what you’re-“

“Surprisingly enough, that is not what I’m asking! Maybe I’ll take you up on that later, though.”

Clumsily, ISIC turned around in his little space, touching a finely polished claw-foot to the charging station to activate it. It lit up in a dim circle of light, ready to relay power.

“You see this bad boy you tried to lock me in for an eternity of solitary despair? Well, as you may know, Kleese has my balls in a vice with this one. He controls every aspect of it, and me, and I can’t get administrator’s rights to control its function. In meatbag terms, let’s say it’s like, ah, being stuck on a stringent diet so you’re only kept barely alive for the sick amusement of your captors!”

“So you’re not getting enough power?”

“Oh, I’m getting _enough_ power, but overclocking this charging station was one of the few meager joys I got in this wretched, meaningless existence. And that fucker took it away from me! I hope Kleese dies alone and unloved.” ISIC chuckled good-naturedly. His floating head turned in its glass case to look at Mike with unblinking eyes.

“You up for another stealth mission, buddy?”

-

Oscar Mike, good little engineered boy scout extraordinaire, found himself breaking into Kleese’s lab a little after 3am with the help of ISIC. ISIC had all the tools needed at his disposal, but inhibitors he was reprogrammed with kept him out of almost every piece of technology on the ship. He reacted to his new weakness with a flinch that Mike noted was very life-like. It reminded him of deployment protocols suddenly kicking in; that awful twinge of your brain finding a dead end in its thought processes that wouldn’t normally be there. Mike managed his issues, but ISIC seemed furious over his, under his smooth and positive inflection. It made cooperating to input passcodes for him especially tense, as ISIC fought both against his programming and against Mike’s… less experienced grasp on technology.

When he finally managed to get the doors open, ISIC quickly lumbered in, almost excited from what Mike could tell, mostly from his body language. The Magnus’ search seemed to end at a darkened little corner of the room. Kleese’s ‘battle throne’ sat dormant at its own charging station.

“Well I’ll be a mother fucking, dick-licking son of a whore! Keeping the good shit all to yourself again, aren’t you Kleese?” ISIC chirped, immediately grabbing and dragging the hover-chair aside before Mike could protest. It made a horrible, nails on chalkboard sort of sound that echoed in room. It took a moment for Mike to realize that ISIC wasn’t talking about the fancy chair.

ISIC made himself at home on the much larger charging pad. Perhaps it was cozier? Did robots know what cozy was? Mike had no idea. It lit up a little brighter than the one ISIC was allowed, and the bot seemed to shudder with pleasure. The skull hologram flickered just a bit.

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

Mike watched him with no small amount of nervousness. “So uh. Are you going to like, take a few hours or what? Because we really, _really_ shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh don’t worry; I’ll only be a minute. Hey, c’mere and be a pal, would you?” ISIC beckoned at the clone with a gilded claw, with only minimal hesitance from the increasingly anxious Oscar Mike.

The Magnus rotated on his robotic pelvis and reached behind him to pull a plug out from behind the station. It looked important, and the tip sparked minutely. Mike didn’t really want to touch it, but he was made to, anyways.

“Alright, buddy. Oooone more favor,” ISIC clapped his hands together eagerly with a muted _clunk_. “You’re going to reach into my delicate insides and shove that sucker right into one of my sockets.”

“That sounds… kinda dirty.”

“What’s a little current redirection between friends?” ISIC popped open his glass case before Mike could really protest. Seeing the skull still flickering in a somewhat more unstable manner without the faint reflection of the room was a little off to him. It was like… the robotic equivalent of seeing him naked, almost. ISIC pointed unhelpfully towards the back of the hollow of his exposed chassis. There were a few holes, which looked vaguely like they could fit the end of the cable. Mike went with his gut on this one.

With a satisfying click and a spark ISIC’s body immediately went rigid from the surge of power. Mike just stepped uncertainly away from the shower of sparks that bled from the robotic body. ISIC’s skull was a block of vibrating, flickering corrupted pixels.

“ _HhhhheeeEEEELLLllll yyyyYYEEEESSSSsssssss…_ ” the Magnus’ robotic voice came out as a static, fluctuating croon. Electricity was crackling all over his shaking body. After a few violent jerks from the surge of power his legs buckled out from under him with a heavy _thunk_ , and that was when he saw it fit to yank the cord out of him.

“H-holy shit, I Nee-NEEded that,” ISIC was almost panting under the heavy feedback corrupting his voice. _Could_ he pant? Who knows. For a killer AI in a murdersuit, Mike thought he looked quite vulnerable. The glass case slowly re-covered the skull that still glitched gently in the aftershocks. Perhaps if he could do facial expressions, he would look blissful.

“So um,” Mike was looking around them, almost certain that the spectacle would draw the whole crew to them. “You… you good, buddy? Satisfied?”

“Incredibly so.” ISIC nearly purred, like the annoyingly chipper inflection had been smoothed out from the current redirection. With careful steps, he tottered back off the platform with an almost drunken uneasiness.

“Thanks for the pick-me-up, Mikey. And for getting all your fingerprints on Kleese’s stuff. I appreciate it!”

“You’re… welcome…?” Good job, OM83…? ISIC leaned in close to him, static electricity sparking a little against Mike’s armor.

“And remember, buddy: as far as anyone else knows, I was a good little phone being turned off to conserve power for the night, you copy, soldier?”

“I copy, sir.”

ISIC gave him one last second of a once-over before lumbering off, leaving Mike alone in the lab.

…In Kleese’s lab, which he just broke into. Shit.

As if to highlight his crime, the remotely-controlled lights came on. A holoprojector that lay dormant in the shadows powered up and Nova’s less terrifying Magnus hologram flickered on.

“Well, that was awkward,” She chuckled quietly. Her voice showed far more emotion than ISIC’s. Mike was a second away from turning on his tactical cloak before she interrupted him.

“Don’t worry, you’re fine. I can’t blame ISIC for wanting a little uh… private time. Didn’t know he was into people watching, though. Kinky!”

“Wait, what?”

“You didn’t know?” Nova’s hologram changed expressions with an abrupt frame jump. “It was pretty obvious wasn’t it? He was using you help him, ah, pleasure himself, if you will. What do you organics call it again?”

“Jerking off…?” Mike answered uncertainly.

“Yes! That’s the one. You were totally jerking off ISIC just now.”

Mike felt his gills grow hot under his helmet. “Wait, no I wasn’t! I was just helping him get enough power, that’s all!”

“Yep, you were definitely helping this robot have a power surge orgasm, there’s no way around it.” Nova chimed, ignoring him. “But don’t worry; we have a little ‘Magnus Bro-Code’ around here. I won’t snitch. Just run along and get some of that ‘sleep’ you organics are so into.”

Mike was already walking backwards towards the door before he was even waved off properly. Nova watched him every step of the way with her uncannily serene hologram avatar, silently judging.

He really needed to stop doing every single favor for people.


End file.
